Difficult Women

by David Plante

  Germaine knows all about designer clothes, and recognizes on other women designers’ styles. Hung in the back seat of the car on the way to Santa Fé is a dress which sways with the movements of the car; she tells me who designed it, but I forget. In her room I see it thrown on the floor by her bed. In what is considered the best clothes shop in Tulsa, she finds a designer sweater, but, she says, the shoulder pads have been taken out, and while she waits the shoulder pads are found and sewn back in so she can buy the sweater and walk out wearing it. She wears a sweatsuit to a dinner party.

  cooking

  An actress visiting Jean for the first time, in London, is amazed that there is no food in the house. When Max comes in he does not appear surprised that there is nothing to eat, or drink. The actress goes out for drink. They all go later to a restaurant.

  Jean’s characters, in boarding houses, are often brought cheese and bread or boiled onions to their rooms.

  In Devon, Jean has someone cook for her. When an unexpected visitor arrives she reluctantly offers tea and hopes the offer won’t be accepted as she’ll have to make the tea, a tedious job, and do the washing up, a more tedious job.

  She eats very little, but likes spicy food.

  Sonia is knowledgeable about and gives a lot of attention to her cooking, which is mostly French. Though she drinks plonk at friends’ houses, her own wine is very good. Her table is always set with bright silver, lovely china, shining crystal, and starched white linen, with flowers in the centre. She eats very little of her own cooking, and criticizes it. She smokes between courses.

  In Italian provincial restaurants, she wants to try dishes she has never had before.

  Germaine writes articles about cookery. The kitchen in her flat in London is scientifically organized for cooking properly.

  country

  Jean was born and brought up in Dominica, an island in the West Indies. Sonia in India. Germaine in Australia. None seem to have any real country to which they belong.

  Jean talks with nostalgia about France, but she doesn’t want to go there because she is frightened it might have all changed. She will not go back to Dominica because she is sure that has changed. “There are no longer any roses there! Not even roses left!”

  Sonia, in London, has many French friends who stay with her when they come over, and who are, I imagine, kept apart by Sonia as belonging to a somewhat superior society. “My French friends,” she says. She often interjects French into her talk. When, as if going to the one country where she might belong, she goes to Paris, she writes to her friends in London please to come visit her as she is lonely.

  Germaine travels a great deal in many countries, except Australia, where she goes rarely.

  D

  depression

  Like her characters, Jean is largely depressed. She has, often, terrible cafards, and she does not keep them to herself. Sometimes you suspect the depression is an affectation. She does not seem to question her depression, or blame it on herself; she blames the world.

  Deeply depressed as she is, Sonia keeps her depression to herself. I imagine she gets out of bed, washes, puts on makeup, goes out to shop, all in the darkness of her depression, to create a bright dinner party for her friends. During the dinner, she gets angry at one of her friends—“What a stupid thing to say”—and ruins the party.

  Germaine, I notice, sighs a lot.

  divorce

  Each is divorced: Jean from her first husband, Jean Lenglet, after thirteen years of marriage. She remarries twice; both husbands die. Sonia, the widow of George Orwell, marries Michael Pitt-Rivers, and divorces him after four years. Germaine marries Paul de Feux and divorces him after three weeks.

  domesticity

  Not until friends go to Jean’s cottage in Devon to decorate it is anything done to make it pretty. She is used to drab rooms, and, unable to change them, she concentrates on details with which to enliven them: a picture, a ceramic leopard, a glass paperweight. But these are mostly gifts. Moving from place to place, she loses things.

  She is not able to make a home for herself.

  In London, Sonia has a large house. The parquet floors are highly polished and reflect the light through the high, clean windows. There are shelves and shelves filled with books, and vases of fresh flowers on tables. After she sells the house, stores her furniture, and moves to Paris, she lives in a small rented room with a large turn-of-the-century armoire; the walls she has had painted pale cream, she has a lace counterpane on the bed, an Indian print cloth over the awkward round table, and vases of flowers.

  Germaine designs her living spaces in London and Italy, where she hardly ever is. In Tulsa, she lives at the back of a garden in a little one-room building. The heating doesn’t work. She says she doesn’t mind, and rather likes her small white room.

  The domestic spaces for all three women are not in any way determined by family life.

  E

  education

  In Dominica, Jean is taught by nuns in a convent school. When she is sixteen, she is sent to England and the Perse School for girls in Cambridge. She is not there for long before she leaves to go to the Academy of Dramatic Arts, where, again, she stays for a short time.

  Sonia is a boarding student at a convent school; I do not know what other, if any, formal education she has.

  Germaine also goes to a convent school. Later, a student of Leavis, she gets her Ph.D. from Cambridge. Her special interest is Renaissance literature.

  emotions

  Jean expresses her emotions with abandon, and, when drunk, wildly.

  In person, Sonia finds it very difficult to express emotions, except for anger. Her letters are filled with expressions of feeling.

  Germaine expresses her feelings fully, then, suddenly, not at all.

  F

  feminism

  A Portuguese friend, male, asks me if I will help get signatures for a petition protesting the arrest, in Portugal, of three women writers called the Three Marias, for a book they have written together. I take the petition to a tea party at Sonia’s; she signs it, as do other female and male guests. Jean, wearing a hat, is there, and when I ask her if she’d like to sign, she looks out, her eyes large and unfocused. “Will you explain it to me?” she asks. I explain. She is still bewildered, but says, “If you think it’s all right.” Hesitantly, she signs. Sometime later I see an article in Time magazine about the Three Marias having been released from arrest. Sometime after that I hear the Three Marias have quarrelled among themselves, and when I tell this to Jean, she shrugs.

  Sonia does not consider feminism in the abstract. She proposes, at a feminist meeting, the establishment of day nurseries for working mothers. Some militant women object that the important issues are not being discussed, and they stop the meeting.

  Often, when I am in public places with Germaine, young and elderly women come to her to say, simply, “The Female Eunuch meant a great deal to me,” or, “Your book changed my life.” She answers, “I’m sure you would have thought out the change on your own.”

  A publisher mentions to Germaine an anthology of women’s poetry edited by three women in California. She says she knows it. He says, “They argued violently over it.” She says, “You surprise me!” Her voice is flat and bitter. “Women arguing violently among themselves! Is that possible? Women are meant to support one another, not fight one another. I am surprised.”

  friends

  Sonia has a large group of friends, keeps in close touch with them, and invites them often to her house to dinner. She likes having long lunches with friends to discuss and advise on, say, changing a publisher, buying a new flat, or problems with close relationships; she not only likes this, she becomes obsessed with these things. She refuses to discuss her own problems; her friends’ problems become hers, and she discusses them while smoking a pack of cigarettes and drinking three bottles of wine. She is obsessed, too, with talking about mutual friends, but she has this rule: only the closest mutual friends are discussed, and
nothing is repeated. Sonia lives in terms of her friends. She is highly critical of them.

  Germaine claims to have no friends, but many people claim to be friends of her. She does not stay in touch with anyone.

  I wonder if Germaine has a proper address book.

  Jean counts on friends getting in touch with her.

  She loves receiving letters, but does not like talking over the telephone. She always answers letters from friends.

  She doesn’t gossip about her friends, and if you say something a little critical of a mutual friend she frowns as if she cannot imagine how you can be a friend of someone and be critical of him.

  Any criticism—or even anger—she might have towards an individual friend comes out as an angry criticism of a generalized “them.”

  G

  generalizations

  Jean’s generalizations about “people” are vast, and arise out of very private obsessions.

  Sonia will say, “The French are . . .,” “The Americans are . . .,” “The English are . . .,” as if to sum up whole cultures in a generalization. Her generalizations are made with such enthusiasm, sometimes such vehement enthusiasm, you don’t dispute them. They arise out of her knowledge of the world.

  In conversation, Germaine makes very few generalizations, and when she does she qualifies them. If I generalize, she says, “Now wait . . .”

  gifts

  Jean is reassured by gifts, and also likes to give them: a shirt, a scarf, a bottle of cologne. But she is not sure you like what she has given you, as you are not quite sure she likes what you have given her.

  Sonia does not enjoy being given a gift. She says thank you, but, you think, quickly pushes it aside, and you’re sure she gives it to someone else. She only enjoys giving, and her gifts are expensive: a cashmere pullover, for example, or a suit.

  When I give Germaine a little gift, I am struck by how appreciative she is; I’m struck, I realize, because she appears to be someone who does not need gifts. Then I leave a packet of mastic from Chios on her desk, as I know she likes to chew it as gum; for days she doesn’t mention it until I ask her, and she says, surprised, “Oh yes,” and I think she thinks I am testing her for a conventional response, which she won’t give. The next day I find a gift from her on my desk.

  God and the Virgin and saints

  Jean was drawn to Catholicism when she was young. Sonia, in a convent school, and Germaine, also in a convent school, were brought up as Catholics.

  Jean is a vague agnostic.

  Sonia is an atheist.

  I imagine this about Germaine: that whether or not God exists in His own right she thinks is not very interesting, but what has been made of Him is.

  The same for the Virgin.

  “I went to Lourdes,” Germaine says, “in the middle of the winter, and found in the grotto where the Virgin appeared spring roses in blossom. I made requests to relieve the sufferings of three friends.”

  Jean, I think, has a belief in saints, if not in God.

  H

  homosexuality

  Drunk, Jean says all people are bisexual. I am sure she is simply repeating what someone, not too long ago, has told her; she does not seem very interested.

  Many of Sonia’s close male friends are homosexual.

  She does not like to be touched by men, homosexual or not, but embraces women easily. She is more at ease with women than men.

  In lectures, Germaine mentions “the lessons which can be learned from our homosexual brothers and sisters.” Privately, she says, “I think it is a sin.”

  About long-lasting homosexual relationships, she says, “I should make a study of them to try to find out how they work,” as if she might from them extract a principle of social behaviour.

  humour

  Jean likes funny stories. She tells this story: her husband Max, with a friend, was sent during the First World War to Malta, where they got drunk and were stopped by a policeman; when Max said, “Balls,” the policeman said, “One does not say ‘Balls’ to the police of Malta.” Jean laughs and laughs, and holds both hands to her mouth. She will tell the story over and over, and laugh in the same way each time.

  With some effort, Sonia laughs; most often she simply says, “How funny,” and smiles. She finds most amusing the oddities of her friends.

  Germaine’s laugh can be a little wicked when a story is told against someone.

  She laughs when she farts.

  I

  individuals and society

  Jean addresses herself to the individual.

  Germaine addresses society.

  In Sonia, a confusion of the two.

  intelligence

  Jean has, I imagine, an intuitive intelligence; it is not structured, but flashes.

  Sonia has great admiration for intelligence, and is intimidated by people whom she considers her intellectual superiors.

  When discussing a topic, Sonia does not so much analyse it as exhaust it.

  Germaine’s intelligence is structured and trained.

  J

  Jews

  I think that to Jean, Jews are foreign and exotic. Her closest friends in Paris are a Jewish family.

  Around the table at a dinner party at Sonia’s are, among others, Jewish writers. There is a pause in the conversation, and Sonia, flicking her ash, says to one of her guests, not a Jew, “Is it true your father couldn’t stand Jews?” He, who will not excuse his father, says, in a long drawl, “It’s absolutely true. He couldn’t stand having a Jew in the same room with him.” Sonia says, “I thought so.” This is to demonstrate such a total lack of prejudice that in her house anything can be said. She believes one should be able to say, “That fucking Jew,” in the same way one might say, “That fucking Scot.” She is very pro-Israeli.

  At a party with Germaine, a large Jewish man asks her, “Are you Jewish?” She answers in what I presume to be Yiddish. He says, “I thought you were.”

  jobs

  Jean’s writing is the only work she is capable of. All other minor attempts at work fail.

  In the world of literature, Sonia has a job, for a short period, as fiction editor at a publishing house. She is pleased to publish good writing, but she is also aware that she must publish books which sell; she takes on a certain novel not merely because it is a good book but also, she is sure, because it will sell; it does.

  She works as one of the editors of a magazine of art and literature, owned by friends.

  She translates from the French the work of writers who are her friends.

  Germaine works as a writer, teacher, lecturer, reviewer, board member of a women’s press, journal editor, and cultivator, in Italy, of iris plants for the orris roots.

  justice

  For Sonia, there are brave attempts made at social justice, and she would and does help in every attempt she believes in, but, finally, there is no social justice.

  She goes to the concentration camp at Dachau with a French friend, who is horrified. Sonia, angry, says, “What did you expect? What? That it wouldn’t be quite as horrible as you imagined? Well, this is just the beginning of the horrors.”

  Sonia organizes letter protests, and is always willing to sign petitions against the imprisonment and torturing of intellectuals; but she does not think this will do much good.

  I imagine that Germaine does not believe there is much justice in the world, but lives must be saved.

  Jean believes there is a world conspiracy against justice.

  L

  literature

  Jean, the writer, has read little.

  When I suggest to Sonia that she should write, she shakes her head no, absolutely no.

  Sonia is telling Jean and me about a book she has just read and mentions what she imagines to be the writer’s intention. Jean and I say, together, “No, that can’t really be the intention of a writer,” and Sonia narrows her eyes and says, “Tiens, that goes to show how little I know about writing.”

  There is no author I mention wh
ose work she has not read—or whom, if he or she is alive, she does not know.

  In Paris, she is reading masses of Victor Hugo, who is, she writes in a letter, marvellous.

  It is as if for Sonia man could do nothing greater than write books. Germaine’s favourite reading, she tells me, is Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso.

  love

  ——————————————————————

  loyalty

  Jean is loyal to friends.

  In some way, Sonia feels responsible for her friends. If they are unhappy, she does what she can to cheer them up; if they are ill, she takes them to her doctor or pays to have them stay in a clinic; if they are in debt, she will go as far as writing to other friends to raise the large sum of money needed to clear the debt.

  Germaine is loyal.

  M

  machines

  There is not one machine Jean can use.

  Without understanding how they work, Sonia can use them.

  Germaine understands them as she uses them.

  men

  ——————————————————————

  mind

  Jean’s mind, I believe, is and always has been stubbornly fixed.

  She knows she is not wrong in what she thinks.

  Sonia does not change her mind easily, but she does.

  Germaine often changes her mind.

  money

  As little as she has had of it—or because she has had so little—Jean seems not to relate money to work. One works and gets little, most likely nothing; money simply occurs suddenly, and is unrelated to what one has or has not done. It is quickly gone, and she has no idea where. She worries a lot about not having it.

  Sonia feels she has not earned the money she gets from the George Orwell Estate, and spends a great deal of it on others.